Page 23 of The Secrets of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #1)

‘Well, ma’am,’ said the bicyclist, ‘if you could go on holding his head, I’ll have a look at what’s happened to your trap.’

Alice quite liked being called ‘ma’am’. ‘I can see what’s happened,’ she called, as the man disappeared behind it. ‘The wheel’s gone down the ditch.’

He reappeared, and said, ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. If your friend would be so good as to climb down—’

‘My sister,’ Alice corrected, and Rachel gave her a minatory look.

‘The trap doesn’t look very heavy. I think if I lifted the body a bit, the pony could pull it out.’

That sounded like a good scheme to Alice. ‘Get down, Ray,’ she urged. ‘You’ll have to get down and lighten the load.’

‘Would you permit me to assist you?’ the young man said, coming close.

Rachel had been scrambling in and out of the trap unassisted for years, but she looked sweetly helpless as she placed hesitant hands on the young man’s shoulders.

He grasped her firmly at the waist – Alice couldn’t see his face from where she was standing, but she knew he looked up at Rachel, and that Rachel blushed – and jumped her neatly down.

Rachel was released, and the young man peered into the trap.

‘Anything else that’s heavy?’ he asked, eyeing a large basket.

Alice answered. Rachel was taking care of her blush. ‘Oh, that’s empty now. We took some things to old Mrs Clay in Ashmore Carr – goosefat and soup and some woollens. She has an influenza, poor thing.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll give it a try, shall we? When I say “go”, lead him forward slowly.’

Alice felt a twinge of conscience. ‘I hope your boots won’t be spoiled.’

‘I’m prepared for it,’ he said, muffled by the trap’s body. ‘A cyclist expects to get muddy. Ready now? One, two, three – go!’

It was probably heavier than he had thought, Alice reflected, for she could hear him grunting, but the ditch was not very deep, and he only had to raise the body enough for the rim of the wheel to clear the edge.

Biscuit obeyed her voice and her tug and stepped forward, the nearside wheel found purchase and the trap was free.

Alice led the pony on a few steps and safely into the middle of the road, and the young man came scrambling out, brushing his hands together. His boots were no longer shiny.

‘All’s well, it seems,’ he said, approaching Rachel again. He doesn’t see me at all , Alice thought. ‘Though if I might presume to advise, it would be as well to have a blacksmith look at the wheel, and make sure there’s no damage.’

Rachel, still in high colour, brought out a sentence she had been practising for minutes. ‘May we know to whom we are indebted?’

‘My name’s Lattery – Victor Lattery. I’ve just come to stay in Canons Ashmore with my aunt, Miss Eddowes. She lives in the stone house at the far end near the church, Weldon House. She’s a philanthropist.’ He looked for reciprocation, and as Rachel seemed to be tongue-tied again, Alice stepped in.

‘I’m Alice Tallant and my sister’s Rachel. We live at the Castle. How do you do?’

‘How do you do?’ he replied. ‘The pleasure of the meeting, I suspect, is all mine, but I hope you’ve taken no real hurt. May I help you up again?’

‘We can get up all right,’ Alice said, and went round to the near side to scramble up, but Rachel let him take her hand and help her, though it was quite unnecessary. ‘I’ll drive,’ Alice said firmly, gathering the reins.

Lattery was still at the other side, gazing up at Rachel, one hand resting on the trap’s side. ‘Don’t forget to have the wheel checked,’ he said earnestly.

‘We won’t,’ Alice said. ‘Goodbye.’ She clucked to Biscuit and drove briskly away. ‘Don’t look back!’ she whispered urgently to Rachel. But it was too late – she already had. ‘What will he think?’

‘He did us a kindness,’ Rachel said, facing front again. ‘It would have been very awkward otherwise.’

‘I expect someone else would have come along. And it was his fault in the first place.’

‘Oh, Alice. Don’t be so hard.’

‘He seemed nice, though, didn’t he?’

Rachel didn’t answer that. ‘I wonder how long he’ll be here,’ she said instead. ‘He said “staying with” his aunt, but that could be just a short visit. What’s a philanthropist?’

‘Isn’t it something to do with stamp collecting?’ Alice said vaguely. ‘I wonder if Giles knows him, or Richard.’

‘Richard would be more likely. Giles has hardly ever been here to make friends. Oh, I wish Richard would come home. I wish the war would be over.’

‘Giles is more likely to be interested in stamp collecting than Richard,’ Alice observed. ‘Do you think we ought to go round by way of the forge? It would be awful if the wheel collapsed on us.’

When they reached the forge, the blacksmith, Eli Rowse, was working on a large, placid Shire horse tethered out front.

He looked up and nodded to them as Alice halted, his large hand full of hoof while he pared the horn.

The horse was dozing comfortably, ears relaxed and pouched lower lip quivering with its breaths.

‘Hullo, Mr Rowse. He’s almost asleep,’ Alice called with amusement. ‘Mind he doesn’t go down!’

‘Ar, he’s a soft ’un, all right,’ said Rowse.

‘Likes to put all his weight in my hand.’ At the sound of voices, his assistant, Axe Brandom, came out of the forge, wiping sweat from his brow with a grubby cloth, blue eyes squinting at them as a stray beam of sunlight broke though the grey cloud bank.

‘Something I can do for you, my ladies?’ Rowse asked, dropping the hoof and straightening up.

‘We had a little accident,’ Alice said. ‘Wheel went down a ditch. I thought p’r’aps you’d have a look and make sure it’s not broken or anything.’

Both smiths came forward. The girls jumped down. ‘Nearside,’ Alice said, going to Biscuit’s head. The carthorse craned round to see what was going on.

‘How’d you come to do a thing like that, miss?’ Rowse asked.

‘Oh, a bicyclist came round the corner too fast and startled poor Biscuit. He helped us out of the ditch afterwards, though.’

Rowse squatted to examine the wheel. Axe, bent over him, raised his head to say, ‘Bicyclist?’

‘A young man. In tweed knickers. He said his name was Victor Lattery.’

‘Oh, ar, I saw him go by earlier on,’ Axe said. ‘Come to live with his aunty, I did hear tell. Miss Eddowes.’

Alice and Rachel exchanged a glance. Live with . That sounded permanent .

Examination over, Rowse eased himself to his feet. ‘Bit of a crack here, in the axle arm.’

‘Is that bad?’ Alice asked, wondering whether they would get into trouble.

‘Oughter be fixed,’ said Rowse. ‘Might go any time, specially if you was to bump over a rock or summat.’

‘But we can drive home?’

Rowse shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t risk it. That road up to the Castle’s in a state. Wouldn’t want you ladies taking a tumble.’ He gave them a small smile, a whiteness in the blackness of his face. ‘My reputation’d take a tumble if I was to let you.’

‘But how shall we get home, then?’ Rachel asked, too anxious to laugh at his joke.

The two men exchanged one of those looks in which questions were asked and answered without words. ‘We got a little cart out the back,’ said Rowse. ‘Axe here’ll drive you home.’

The cart was shabby and old, but Axe laid a clean blanket over the seat.

‘Don’t want to mess up your nice frocks,’ he said shyly.

He harnessed up an elderly brown pony, attached Biscuit to the back with a rope halter, and invited the girls to get in.

Rachel climbed up, and as Alice prepared to follow, a stout little Jack Russell bitch came bustling out and demanded her attention.

‘She’s sweet!’ she exclaimed squatting to scratch behind the ears. ‘Is she yours? What’s her name?’

‘Dolly,’ Axe said. ‘She’s in pup.’

‘Oh, how wonderful.’

‘Daft old thing,’ he said, smiling at the dog. ‘Never likes me out of her sight.’

‘Oh, then can’t she come with us?’ Alice pleaded.

‘’Fyou don’t mind. She mid have dirty feet.’

‘I’m already muddy from the ditch. My coat can take it.’

So they drove off, with Axe at the reins and Dolly enthroned on Alice’s lap, facing forward with an air of intense interest. Axe was too big for the trap, like an adult in a child’s pull-cart, and his hands, Alice noted, were enormous – the reins just disappeared in them.

But there was something very gentle about him, and he kept a light contact with the pony’s mouth, not jerking or pulling as she had often seen men do.

The forge was a place of interest to the girls, particularly to Alice, who had often had long conversations with Mr Rowse while one of the horses was shod.

So they knew Axe Brandom by sight – he was one of a large local family, and the elder brother of their own groom Josh – though had never had occasion to talk to him.

Alice looked at him sideways now under her lashes, impressed by the size and presence of him.

She noted the fine golden hairs over his cheekbones, illuminated by that same stray sunbeam, the nice straightness of his nose, like something architectural, the curve of his lips … She shivered suddenly.

He glanced sideways at her. ‘All right, miss? Hope you didn’t take cold, waiting about?’

‘No, not at all,’ Alice said, and suddenly wanted to keep him talking. ‘Do you know Miss Eddowes?’

‘Seen her at church,’ he admitted. ‘Never spoken to her. Mended her gates once,’ he remembered. ‘New hinges.’

‘Oh, I know – those tall, fancy ones with the bird thing in the middle.’

He nodded. ‘Phoenix,’ he offered.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bird that rises from its own ashes,’ said Axe. A slight blush touched his cheeks. It was not often that he was the purveyor of knowledge – especially to one of the gentry. ‘Rector had it in his sermon one time and I asked Mr Arden,’ he explained.

Mr Arden was the choirmaster. ‘Do you sing in the choir?’

He nodded, still blushing. ‘Tenor,’ he admitted.